From London, Susan had asked him if he wanted her to cancel all three cards; the search had been issued for the car as well, but nothing had come back. He thought, I’ll have to go down to the house right now, perhaps they’re there after all. That would be the most welcome surprise under the circumstances. But then his expenses-paid jaunt would be over and that would be a bore. Perhaps he could delay things a day or two.
He leaned over to the tourist and asked him in English if he had a light for the cigarette he had pulled out and was waiting to use.
“I don’t smoke,” the man said in the same language, but with a velvet accent.
“That’s the best policy, I suppose!”
“I’d advise you to stop.”
The words were said with a lovely smile.
“Too late now.” Rockhold laughed.
He lowered the cigarette and then finally put it away. It was sensible advice, all the same. The man saw this and said, “No, I didn’t mean that. Please smoke, it doesn’t bother me.”
“My wife agrees with you.” Rockhold sighed. “But for some reason cigarettes make me feel healthier.”
“Do they?”
“It’s hard to explain. By the way, do you know the way to Sovana? I have to drive there.”
The man looked out across the square and pointed to the garage on the far side.
“It’s down there, I think. It’s about two kilometers.”
“Thank you very much. I should walk it for my health.”
“You can walk. It’s not far. But uphill on the way back.”
“Uphill?” Rockhold echoed.
“A steep climb on a bad day.”
That wouldn’t do, but he decided to walk it all the same. To hell with uphill climbs, but pity the aging, unexercised heart. By two he was at the house, to which he had his own key from the office in London along with the number of the woman who looked after the grounds in their absence. He let himself in through the iron gate and then rang the bell at the front door. There was no car parked outside, so it was clear that the Codringtons were not there, not in any case at that moment. He called the woman and she answered. In good English she promised to come down at once. He let himself into the house as well and left the door open. Then he entered the salon and saw the sheeted tables and chairs and the atmosphere of abandonment. He understood at once that they had not been there.
He walked around the vaulted rooms while waiting for the woman and then he happened upon the room where Faoud had slept. The visitor had tidied it up after himself, but it was still obvious that someone had been there, because on the floor there were breadcrumbs and the pillows were dented. He looked at them closely to see if there were hairs to pick from them: there were three to pocket. Just as he was filching them, the woman arrived and he went down to see what her story was. They talked outside in the garden because she didn’t want to go into the house, and there was an eager indignation somewhere in her voice, but not related to himself. She said that she had seen their car the day before parked by the orchard, and that it had appeared out of nowhere, unannounced. The Codringtons always called her two days before they arrived.
“It was the Peugeot?” Rockhold asked.
“The same as always. My husband says he saw him driving in during the afternoon?”
“There was only one?”
“They weren’t together. There was only one driver. My husband says he was driving erratically.”
“Did your husband see Signor Codrington?”
“No, he didn’t. He saw a black man driving the car.”
“I’m sure he didn’t see that.”
“My Roberto has an eagle eye, sir.”
“That man drove in here and left the car in the orchard?”
“He must have.”
“It’s unlikely to have been a black man, Signora Tassi. But at least your husband says he was alone.”
“He saw what he saw.”
She drew herself up defiantly.
“He’s not lying, Signor Rewkhol.”
“I’m not saying he’s lying. I just mean that sometimes it’s hard to see things correctly.”
“E cosa vuol dire quello?” she burst out.
“I’m afraid I don’t speak your lovely language, Signora Tassi, you’ll have to forgive me.”
He was so polite that she relented at once.
“It’s an impertinent thing to do,” she said, “coming back here in their car.”
“He must have stayed in the house,” he muttered.
“Of course he stayed in the house.”
Rockhold began to think backward. The shoe shop in Fasano had said it was a young man who bought the shoes. The car had arrived home with only one driver. The man in the cafe in Sovana had a nice smile and idle eyes. Everything hung together on one thread. He suddenly swore, because he had left the car in Sorano and he would have to climb back up there; it would take an hour at least. He asked the signora if she could drive him up there, but her husband had taken their car to Orvieto for the day.
“You didn’t walk from Sovana?”
“I did, madame, I did. My heart cried out for it.”
He set off back to Sovana with a wild feeling of failure and irresponsibility. Halfway there he lost his breath and sat on a stone wall to let the sweat dry. He called Susan and asked her to leave the cards untouched for twenty-four hours. He needed one more clue, one more place-marker, because he was now sure that the man who was driving the car would make a mistake larger than the ones he had already made. When he arrived back in the village he went through all the cars parked in the square but was unsurprised to find that the bird had flown its open-air cage. He therefore went up to his own car parked at the Fortezza, paid the bill at reception, and then sat for a few minutes in the lobby, reading the maps he had brought with him. He would have to guess which of the two roads the man had taken, and in which direction, but almost immediately, and without effort, he knew it was north.
—
An hour later, on the autostrada to Florence, Susan called him from London to tell him that a Codrington credit card had been used an hour earlier in a hotel just north of Siena. It was a wine estate called Badia a Coltibuono, not far from Gaiole in Chianti.
At the dead center of the afternoon, the sun blazing down on thousands of totemic cypresses (“Planted by the English,” he always said to himself), he stopped in Radda and stretched his legs along a panoramic view, climbed up to a cold little church, and sat on the steps to continue his conference with his assistant. The stony calm of the Tuscan villages in high heat; the birds swarmed around him as if attracted to his internal energy.
“How many charges were there on the card?”
“Three.”
“The hotel—”
“Yes, a charge for 110 euros, which has to be the room. Then two small charges for food and drinks, I think.”
“So he must be there now, then.”
“He made the last charge an hour and a half ago.”
“Almost there,” he said tensely.
“He’ll be there for the night, so there’s no hurry.”
“Look at the website for the estate. How is it arranged?”
She had already done it.
“It’s not really a hotel,” she said. “The rooms are in various places spread over the property. There’s a tower with three units. Then there’s a separate house. Then four rooms in the main house.”
“We can’t tell which room he booked or what kind?”
“No, we just have the charge. It looks like he got a tower room, because they cost 110.”